Finished the game, here's questions and comments (spoilers)

[duckwizard]

Finished it on Friday after restarting a couple times (probably didn't have to, but I just found it easier to restart when things weren't working out).

I finished with 200 out of 210 points. So my questions are related to those 10 points I didn't get.

I know that there is a way to deal with Medusa without killing her. Judging from the lyrics of the lute song, I'm guessing if I play the lute song for Medusa she'll realize how nice I am and give me the stone. Correct? (I guess I should just go try it... but I won't have time to re-play for a while and I want to know!)

In dragon-infested Daventry, there is a screen with a cave and a broken-down boardwalk leading through it. Is this screen a red herring, or is there a way to cross the boardwalk? If so, do some of my missing points lie at the other end? I pretty much powered through the entirety of Daventry. Headed straight for the dragon, defeated him, took Rosella straight home. Are there points in Daventry I should have looked for?

Comments:

The only thing I found really annoying was during the spell creation process. I knew what I had to do, but I kept accidentally clicking the hand on inventory items when I wanted to pick them up, instead of cycling through to the pointer icon. Of course this killed me every time, and I would say "Damn it, I meant to click the pointer!" But that didn't stop me from doing it over and over again, sometimes several times in a row - for some reason, my brain associates "hand" with "pick up" in an inventory screen. I understand the distinction between "use" and "pick up" is necessary, especially during spell creation. Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I think it would make the process a lot less frustrating if the cursor always returned to "pointer" as soon as you do something. For example, if I click "hand" on the bowl to blow on it, it should revert to "pointer" automatically instead of remaining on "hand". Then you will always have to purposely switch to "hand" when you want to perform an action, and it would be a lot less frustrating. Just my two cents.

Edit: forgot to add "spoiler" tag to subject

[Brainiac]

I finished with 200 out of 210 points. So my questions are related to those 10 points I didn't get.

Did you complete all of the spells in The Sorcery of Old? Each of those is worth seven points, so that would cover a big chunk of your missing points.

[duckwizard]

Yep, did all the spells.

Is teleportation at random useful for anything?

[Loney Childress]

Yes, that's how I got past the snowman. I just recently realized you can also use the sleep spell.

[duckwizard]

Oh yeah - plot comments. These are NOT complaints - I thought the game was awesome. Just playing devil's advocate a little.

1. Why is Gwydion able to read? The first rule of oppression is not to let your oppressee learn to read. Considering Mananan would have had to teach Gwydion this skill - is he a moron? Why is Gwydion's bed safe from inspection, but he can detect the presence of any forbidden items without even searching the boy?
2. Why would Mananan go to Daventry and steal a prince to be his slave? Surely there are easier places to get a slave?
3. Why doesn't he notice when I steal his key? Or his mirror? Or a bunch of spell ingredients from his lab? Or when a page that has been missing from his spellbook for decades suddenly re-appears of its own accord?
4. Why does the cat hate me so much? Since it's a former apprentice, you would think he would hate Mananan even more, and cooperate with my efforts to vanquish him. I half expected him to tell me where to find mandrake root as soon as I got the "language of animals" spell. But instead he's just pissed at me and even tries to kill me regularly.
5. It's hilarious that the Behrs install a lock on their door in the closing sequence. But seriously, it only took like 8 missing bowls of porridge before they starting taking security measures.
6. Why does Mananan get mad at me when I run out of food? Shouldn't he be bringing home more food for himself to eat? If I'm not allowed out of the house, how am I supposed to get him more raw, disgusting mutton to eat? Surely someone has been doing the grocery shopping for the last 18 years?
7. It's not OK for me to stick my hand in a tree-hole when I don't know what's inside, but it *is* OK for me to become a defenseless fly and move my entire insect body in there? Nice logic, Gwydion.

[Eventide]

Finished it on Friday after restarting a couple times (probably didn't have to, but I just found it easier to restart when things weren't working out).

I finished with 200 out of 210 points. So my questions are related to those 10 points I didn't get.

I feel your pain. I was 1 point short of the best score. I hear there's some kind of letter out there I might have missed?

Let me tell you I felt so foolish after I found out the porridge somehow respawns (it never did for me so I'm just assuming it's true). I restarted probably 20 times trying to condense my first two trips down as much as I could so I could have the cat cookie made by the time Mananan came back from his second journey.

I WOULD have said I found the puzzles to be counter intuitive and nearly impossible without hints, because I was under the impression I only had so much food to go through before I dead ended. Now, I realize I could have had a lot of fun doing some exploring and discovering, if only I had known. C'est la vie.

[Radogol]

Let me tell you I felt so foolish after I found out the porridge somehow respawns (it never did for me so I'm just assuming it's true).

Eh? It always respawns as long you had already used it. There's no random element to it.

[Erpy]

We included a section in the manual that kinda states that unless you save a game away from the mansion with the wizard being seconds away from returning, you shouldn't get stuck. There's not all that much more we can do to free people of that tendency to automatically apply impressions from the original onto the remake.

1. Why is Gwydion able to read? The first rule of oppression is not to let your oppressee learn to read. Considering Mananan would have had to teach Gwydion this skill - is he a moron? Why is Gwydion's bed safe from inspection, but he can detect the presence of any forbidden items without even searching the boy?

The KQ companion offered the suggestion that the wizard taught Gwydion to read so he could read books hand-picked by the wizard to keep him busy in ways that don't involve snooping around the mansion or trying to sneak into the valley. It of course opens up the risk of the slave getting his hands on a magic tome and practicing magic, but it's not like Manannan's laboratory is THAT easy to enter, so perhaps Manannan was confident about that one.

2. Why would Mananan go to Daventry and steal a prince to be his slave? Surely there are easier places to get a slave?

The original already mentioned the wizard never stole infants from neighbouring countries in order to avoid suspicion. In KQ3 Redux, there's also the added suggestion that the behind-the-scenes villain (who knew Manannan) pointed Alexander out to Manannan as the next candidate to REALLY spite King Graham.

3. Why doesn't he notice when I steal his key? Or his mirror? Or a bunch of spell ingredients from his lab? Or when a page that has been missing from his spellbook for decades suddenly re-appears of its own accord?

It's possible the wizard has a spare key for himself to check on his wand (after all, the key is found inside a cloak he never wears in-game) and that he doesn't actually hang out in the laboratory between the start of the game and his last snack as a human.

4. Why does the cat hate me so much? Since it's a former apprentice, you would think he would hate Mananan even more, and cooperate with my efforts to vanquish him. I half expected him to tell me where to find mandrake root as soon as I got the "language of animals" spell. But instead he's just pissed at me and even tries to kill me regularly.

Nowhere in the game is it mentioned that the cat is a former apprentice...in fact, the previous Gwydion's journal already mentions the cat as a troublemaker, though you can't be 100% sure it's the same one.

5. It's hilarious that the Behrs install a lock on their door in the closing sequence. But seriously, it only took like 8 missing bowls of porridge before they starting taking security measures.

Thing is, there's no canon amount of times the porridge was taken. For all we know, the porridge was only taken once or twice over the course of the game.

6. Why does Mananan get mad at me when I run out of food? Shouldn't he be bringing home more food for himself to eat? If I'm not allowed out of the house, how am I supposed to get him more raw, disgusting mutton to eat? Surely someone has been doing the grocery shopping for the last 18 years?

There's herbs and foodstuffs in the kitchen. You're probably officially supposed to prepare a meal for him using those, you just can't do that in-game. Manannan's barrels may be magical and never run dry of foodstuffs. It's not the first time a magical container that can produce food out of thin air appears in the KQ universe.

7. It's not OK for me to stick my hand in a tree-hole when I don't know what's inside, but it *is* OK for me to become a defenseless fly and move my entire insect body in there? Nice logic, Gwydion.

If you were an ant inside that trunk, what would be harder to miss, a small fly buzzing around at high speed or a big arm that's filling up most of the hole?

[Eventide]

Eh? It always respawns as long you had already used it. There's no random element to it.

I am guilty of running off expectations of the original. It never occurred to me that there could be another bowl of porridge, so I held on to the one I collected at the beginning.

[Radogol]

Eh? It always respawns as long you had already used it. There's no random element to it.

I am guilty of running off expectations of the original. It never occurred to me that there could be another bowl of porridge, so I held on to the one I collected at the beginning.

To be fair, I also panicked a little after running out of food items. However, having read the manual, I knew there has to be a way to get more. The porridge seemed to be the most likely item to respawn, and I was fresh off replaying KQ2+, in which the dwarf's coins respawned if you lost them prematurely.

[Nei]

4. Why does the cat hate me so much? Since it's a former apprentice, you would think he would hate Mananan even more, and cooperate with my efforts to vanquish him. I half expected him to tell me where to find mandrake root as soon as I got the "language of animals" spell. But instead he's just pissed at me and even tries to kill me regularly.

Nowhere in the game is it mentioned that the cat is a former apprentice...in fact, the previous Gwydion's journal already mentions the cat as a troublemaker, though you can't be 100% sure it's the same one.

It wasn't quite mentioned but once you get the 'understanding animals' spell, the cat mentioned something like "I used to be his favourite". Unless Manny is like, totally hot for Gwydion and thinks of him as a pet (disturbing mental images arise), the remark does sort of imply that the cat was in a position now usurped by Gwydion.

[Fien]

Question: Is there anything to do with the honey and the bees? Or are they perhaps a reference to another Quest game that I'm missing?

[Erpy]

No. It's just something we took from the original and made a bit more obvious.